


With a Thousand Lies and a Good Disguise

by Alcoholic_Kangaroo



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Daddy Kink, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Parent/Child Incest, Sex, Sperm Donation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28662219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alcoholic_Kangaroo/pseuds/Alcoholic_Kangaroo
Summary: Gyro and Fenton have been kinda-sorta-dating for a while when a family secret pops up.
Relationships: Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera/Gyro Gearloose
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	With a Thousand Lies and a Good Disguise

The attraction between the two had been almost instantaneous. Like two magnets inexplicably drawn to each other, coming together had been as natural as breathing. Gyro Gearloose knew the moment he saw the young duck he wanted him. No, he _needed_ him. And that he would have him.

They nearly never met.

It had not been Gyro’s idea to bring on the brilliant young student and he hadn’t had any say in the matter. Taking on a new intern had been pretty near the bottom of his list of things to do, somewhere between having his leg surgically amputated and joining a monastery. At the time, it had been nearly three years since his last intern had walked out in a rage and the entire experience had left a sour taste in Gyro’s mouth. So when Mr. McDuck had slapped a pile of resumes on his desk and ordered that he choose one to begin working under him, immediately, he had nearly swiped the pile from his desk and quit on the spot. 

Instead, he had thought about what his therapist had said about his “mood swings” and pretended the pile merely did not exist for nearly a month. As with many problems in his life, Gyro had assumed that if he just ignored it, it would go away on its own. Except Mr. McDuck had to ruin that illusion by strutting in one day, strolling over to Gyro’s desk, shuffling quickly through the resumes, and picking out the one labeled Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera.

“This one looks like a winner,” he had drawled, handing Gyro the piece of paper. “Give him a try, Gyro, and remember where you would be if nobody had ever given you your first break.”

To be fair, Fenton probably had been the most obvious choice from the lot. A nearly perfect GPA, experience in various clubs and activities, the boy even claimed to speak Spanish fluently as one of his skills. Gyro could get by with some basic Japanese from his time interning in Tokyolk but that wasn’t nearly as handy in the United States as Spanish would be.

“Okay, fine,” he had agreed, rolling his eyes in exaggerated annoyance just so his boss knew how much he despised agreeing to all of this. “But if he’s annoying, I’m not keeping him around.”

And had he been annoying.

He was also extremely attractive. Gyro had always had a thing for ducks, an admittedly embarrassing reason behind why he had first applied to St. Canard University in his teens rather than one of the other Ivy Leagues on the east coast, and Fenton had been no exception. He showed up for his interview in a rumpled white jacket with a badly knotted tie, looking about as professional as a sixteen-year-old boy interviewing for a job at McDonald’s, and he had still looked absurdly good.

By the way that Fenton had stared at him, his eyes wide, pupils dilated, Gyro knew the attraction had been mutual. Poor boy, probably hadn’t even realized he was staring like that.

They were professional enough to at least hold off until his second week on the job. They took that time to get to know each other. He was infuriatingly incompetent. Smart enough, oh so smart in fact, but absent-minded. The type of person who is quick enough to complete complicated mathematical equations with one hand while overfilling a coffee mug with the other. He obeyed all of Gyro’s commands but it always seemed to be either too closely, so precisely that he refused to use his brain and see when the instructions just wouldn’t work, or he ignored them entirely and managed to blow something up.

“I said twenty seconds not two minutes,” Gyro growled out, staring at the gooey mess that had bubbled over the edges of the beaker. “Do you even listen to me? Are you deaf? Can you hear my voice?”

“I hear it yelling at me every night as I try to fall asleep.”

Fenton’s infatuation with Gyro is glaringly obvious. Anybody would only have to watch them for an hour to see that. The way he follows him around like a puppy, the perpetual star-struck look on his face. The fact that Gyro is as nearly as infatuated with Fenton in return is much less clear. Unlike the intern, Gyro has had decades to learn how to hide his own emotions. He watches Fenton as often as he dares but only when Fenton is unaware that he is, in fact, being watched.

It’s not even just physical, their connection. That would be so much easier if it was. Gyro would never admit it to anybody, especially to Fenton himself, but he has never been in the presence of somebody who so closely mirrored his own intelligence. Fenton is brilliant. He has a lot of growth to accomplish still, a lot of studying to do, but he has the brain if not the experience. He is young and cute and bubbly and brimming over with potential.

He reminds Gyro of a young version of himself.

Except, of course, Gyro wasn’t absolutely adorable at that age. He has always been lanky. Tall, skinny genes run in his family and everything about him is painfully long - his legs, his hands, his neck, his feet. Fenton is different. He is small and soft. His limbs are short, his hands are petite. They’re like a girl’s hand compared to Gyro’s. His fingers are stubby when Gyro intertwines them and pins the intern’s hands over his head. But there are no unpleasant angles to his figure, no sharp joints, or hard bones to dig against Gyro’s own angularity. He possesses the plumpness of a duck.

Gyro had grown up in a mid-western state with a high chicken population and a low duck one. There had only been three ducks in his entire grade and by the time he graduated as Valedictorian he had dated two of them. Nobody, especially his family, had ever understood why he had been attracted to that particular subset of the population. He never tried to explain it, either, because he knew the explanation would make him appear weak.

When you’re as hard as Gyro is in every way - physically, mentally, verbally - you need a pillow to cushion you. Somebody gentle and warm. Gyro saw in ducks what he himself lacked, something comfortable, something less stark and cold than what defined himself. He had never wanted to date another chicken, especially one as lean and mechanical as himself, because it would have been like two wrenches rubbing together. 

He craved softness.

Fenton has an abundance of softness inside of him.

Their first time, Gyro had nearly moaned when he grabbed up Fenton in a kiss. He managed to keep it inside, thankfully, because it would have been mortifying to react in such a way when his dick was still tucked away in his pants. But he had felt so very good in his arms. He is small in a way that is deceptive. Like maybe his plushness is nothing but feathers and just beneath them, he could very well be skin and bones. Except, no. Fenton is genuinely delicate in stature but with the padding of any healthy duck.

Unlike chickens, ducks evolved from primitive waterfowl. Life on the water created the necessity of subcutaneous fat and thick layers of down to keep their ancestors warm in the frigid conditions. As with many of their evolutionary hand-downs, these characteristics have remained. More as a sexual preference than one of need, according to the studies of caveducks and their societies. Even once ducks had moved off of water the fat had protected them against famine, though the thick down appeared to serve no advantageous purpose; later duck societies had come to recognize plumpness as a sign of prosperity and sexual desirability.

So it remains, a result of both evolution and sexual selection. And Gyro is glad it does as his fingers disappear into Fenton’s plushness. His down is so thick it puts Gyro’s own to shame. He’s the best lay Gyro has ever had. Despite his smallness, his softness, his padding protects him, and he never objects to how hard he is taken. He turns into a mewling mess in Gyro’s arms, begging for more, always wanting it harder, faster, rougher. Something he usually can give him but, well, he does have twenty years on the boy, and keeping up with somebody that young and energetic can be difficult.

But oh so worth it.

Gyro usually isn’t one to worry about rejection. Never considered conventionally attractive by any means with his lankness and oversized glasses, he has never had difficulty on the dating scene. His intelligence and wit has served him well within certain communities and his admittedly nerdy style of dressing has been described by past lovers as “kitsch” or “proto-hipster.” To certain subsets of the population, a bowtie is as sexy as leather pants or halter tops. 

Still, when he first began to show an interest in Fenton a little niggle of worry had chewed at the back of his mind, thinking, perhaps, the young duck would not be interested in somebody so much older than him. Let alone a man and a chicken, to boot. Strictly speaking, the likelihood of him already dating a pretty, young girl duck close to his own age had been relatively high. He would have had plenty of opportunity to meet such a lucky young woman in one of his classes and his endless cheer and good looks would have worked in his favor.

When Fenton kissed him that fateful afternoon, it was all the confirmation, all the permission, that Gyro needed to move forward.

“That was so good,” Fenton had croaked in awe after their first time. His voice had been hoarse from the delicious noises that Gyro had fucked out of him while being railed to within an inch of his life. The chicken had been standing at the back of the lab, watching the worn-out creature sprawled out across his desk as he meticulously tucked his shirt back into his slacks. Fenton, his legs hanging off the end of the desk, had been too dazed to even consider sitting up, let alone looking around for wherever Gyro had tossed his button-down after tearing it from his body. Instead, he had continued to stare up at the ceiling, one hand unconsciously playing with his own cooling semen smeared in the down of his lower belly. “I never knew it could be that good. My head’s spinning.”

After that first time, Gyro never worried about the age difference again. Not when he knew how ravenous Fenton could be for his touch. Not when he knew how much he could just destroy the boy with his scrawny, almost-middle-aged body. Not even the first time Fenton called him _that_.

Under the wrong context, it could have been off-putting. Somewhere between insulting and cringeworthy.

Despite Fenton’s typical fumbling manner, he is usually able to read the room, and the evening he decided to go through with it had been a tranquil one. Gyro had asked him out to dinner – a date that wasn’t really a date – and there had been good food and better wine. Fenton is a lightweight and it only took a single glass of Merlot to have him giggling and blushing over the most innocent of come-ons.

By the time they had arrived at Gyro’s condo, they had been riled up and ready to go; their kisses had been unusually passionate, running into each other in an unrelenting battle for dominance interrupted only by the need to breathe. Fenton had managed to get rid of the bowtie and unbutton Gyro’s shirt but had settled for slipping his hands up inside and around to dig his fingers into Gyro’s back rather than removing the shirt. Gyro had roughly yanked off Fenton’s dress pants while he clung to the mattress to keep from sliding off the bed with them, but so far hadn’t made it any further than that, their need to touch each other halting the process. It had been messy and hot and the taste of the wine on his lover’s tongue had been intoxicating in a way entirely independent of the alcohol content. It had all been taste and smell and feel and the sound of Fenton’s breathless moaning.

“Daddy,” Fenton had let it slip out as if it were an accident but the way he said it, with just that slight wavering hesitancy in his voice, almost indiscernible, revealed the truth. It wasn’t an accident and Gyro knew it wasn’t, the young duck was testing it out to see how it felt on his tongue and, more importantly, to see how Gyro reacted to it.

He could have reacted better. Gyro had frozen, his body going as stiff as the cock still trapped inside his slacks. It had felt like a shock of cold water over his head. Like a punch to the gut. He was breathless, or rather, his breath was caught in his throat, choking him. Beneath him, Fenton was still panting. The hands on Gyro’s shoulders were shaking. Gyro pushed himself up against the mattress to look at the young man beneath him, meeting his wide, scared-looking eyes. Large and glistening like prey caught in the grasp of some horrible predator. At that moment he looked so very young. He was so very young. A good twenty years younger than Gyro himself. It stirred up something with him that Gyro had never felt in his nearly half a century on the planet. Something soft. That softness he had thought he had never possessed. The urge to protect, to nurture.

He kissed the boy again, slower this time, and reached down to grab at Fenton’s dick. Still hard. He wrapped his fingers tightly around it and gave it a few slow, agonizing pumps with his wrist. His other hand, holding his weight up just above Fenton’s head, stroked the boy’s hair lovingly.

“I’m going to take care of my baby boy,” he assured Fenton, his words and his touch pulling another long moan from his intern. “Lay back and let daddy take care of you.”

That night started something new. A type of play. It isn’t something they always do. Not that often, even, and only within the safely enclosed walls of Gyro’s bedroom. But it is nice to indulge sometimes and it gives Gyro an excuse to coddle and pet his young lover in a way he would not normally allow himself to do. What they are now...it’s complicated. He thinks they’re dating, the rules haven’t been laid out or anything so concrete, but Gyro likes to assume that Fenton knows this is supposed to be a monogamous thing. He hasn’t told him he loves him. He isn’t sure if these feelings are love. 

Gyro has thought he was in love a handful of times in his life and most of those times had turned out to be false. At least one of his most valued relationships had ended too quickly because of his mumbling those words out prematurely. He doesn’t want to risk that happening again. At the same time, asking Fenton to agree to be only his without any such declaration feels somehow wrong. Unlike Gyro, Fenton was made to be loved, and anything less than that feels sacrilegious.

So instead of telling him he loves him or referring to him as some form of significant other, he calls him his baby boy and he cuddles him and kisses him and tells him how much “daddy” loves him because “daddy” is somebody else, somebody pretend, and what is pretend doesn’t have to reflect in real life.

Weekends are the best for that sort of play. Weekdays are sporadic. Fenton only has classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, after work, but he is almost always weighed down with homework. Sometimes he brings it over to Gyro’s and works on it as they watch old sitcoms from the seventies together. Sometimes he needs to devote more concentration to his work than Gyro’s home can afford and apologizes with a stream of kisses before he leaves work, promising to make it up to him later. Usually, he knows ahead of time whether or not he’ll be spending the night with Gyro and on those where he can’t results in rough and quick sessions on Gyro’s desk or against one of the glass walls or that one time in the kiddy pool. Gyro had brought it in to test the viscosity of a particular type of mud for the formation of one of McDuck’s quicksand traps but, fortunately, at the time it had been empty.

Usually, they at least wait until the end of the day. Until their work is complete and put away for the night. Sometimes they don’t make it that far, sometimes Fenton is just too tempting, and Gyro is too eager, and they don’t even make it to lunch. But not usually. They have work to complete. As much as Gyro would prefer to just fuck his intern all day, this is his job, not just a hobby he conveniently gets paid for. If Mr. McDuck were to find out about their relationship that would already put them both on thin ice, but if he knew that they fucked in the lab, not once or twice, but regularly?

It’s difficult. Not touching him. His intern is so touchable, it can be hard to keep his hands to himself. Especially when he’s doing something that exposes his particularly squeezable behind.

Today is one of those days. They’ve been working in the chemistry section of the lab all day and Gyro has assigned Fenton the task of taking notes. Unfortunately for him, Fenton favors leaning forward against the table on one elbow when he jots down said notes. This lamentable position causes his soft little butt to point up in the air and Gyro’s fingers to twitch as he resists grabbing. He manages to push back the urge for a good two hours before, getting lost in thought, his body goes onto autopilot. Running on reflex alone, he runs his hand over along the underside of the little puffball tail, not even thinking about it until Fenton jumps in surprise.

“Oh, sorry,” Gyro mumbles, mortified by his own unpredictable hands. He rubs them against the outer pockets of his pans as if he just touched something dirty. “I just-”

“I don’t mind,” Fenton smiles over his shoulder at him. He wags his tail proactively in the air like an excited kitten. “Really.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Gyro says gruffly. He takes a couple of steps back and breathes deeply in and out a few times, steadying himself and willing down the stirring in his slacks. He points to a large cupboard that reaches from ceiling to floor about fifteen feet away. “Please go fetch me the spare chemical analyzer on the second shelf, we’d finish much quicker if we had another.”

“The second shelf?” Fenton asks, tilting his head back to look up at the towering piece of furniture. He pulls himself up to his full height. “Way up there?”

“Use the step ladder.”

Even with the step ladder, Fenton can barely reach the second shelf on his tiptoes. Holding a beaker in one hand, Gyro watches him appreciatively from this angle, preparing the excuse inside his head that he was just keeping an eye out in case he were to fall. If his intern just so happens to catch him staring. The duck’s got his tail stretched out straight along with his legs, as if something so small could possibly help him with his balance.

“That boy was made for sex,” Gyro mutters under his breath, feeling the heat in his cheeks. He can’t even explain it himself, what so inexplicably draws him to his intern. He’s hooked up with plenty of drakes in his life, especially during his promiscuous school years, and not one of them had been able to excite him like this awkward young man. All Fenton has to do is say his name and Gyro is prepared to drop to his knees and lap at the boy’s feet.

As he’s watching, said feet slip on the plastic ladder beneath him. Gyro feels his heart jump up into his throat and he’s already taken a step forward, as if he could possibly save him from this distance, but the duck catches himself. There is a clatter of instruments banging against each other as Fenton’s hands scramble to find something to grab at on the shelf to steady himself. The ladder skitters an inch or two to the side before stopping.

“Ow!” Fenton cries out sharply.

“Gearloose DNA detected,” Gyro’s voice follows. Except it isn’t coming from him. It came from inside the shelf, muffled and echoey.

Gyro’s mind reels for a moment, trying to figure out what just happened. Between the near-fall and the banging and the sound of his own voice, he needs a second to process everything.

“Hey, Gyro, what’s this?” Fenton asks, turning on the ladder to face his boss. He’s holding a metal instrument about the size and shape of a toaster in his hands. There’s a screen on one side with a number of buttons and dials.

“Oh, that,” Gyro says. He walks over to him, reaching up for the device. Fenton passes it down to him. It’s lighter than Gyro remembers it being. There is dust on the top. “It was a prototype. For the McDuck library security system. It identifies DNA similarities and judges the likelihood of a familial match instantaneously.”

“You set it to identify your DNA?” Fenton asks, remembering the words that had emitted from the machine just a few seconds ago.

“It’s easy to program different sequences,” Gyro says placidly. He extends a hand to Fenton, indicating his wish to help him climb back down. Fenton turns to grab another machine from the shelf before he turns it takes the long fingers in his own. “Here let me show you.”

Carrying the chemical analyzer securely under one arm, Fenton returns to the lab table, setting the device carefully on the tabletop. Gyro begins playing with the knobs on the other machine. They’re clunkier than he remembered. Maybe they’ve just lost some of their elasticity after sitting up on that shelf for nearly a decade. Or maybe he was just worse at designing machines in his thirties.

“I think it might be broken,” Fenton says, watching him fiddle with the settings. He’s leaning against the table again, wriggling the little puff of a tail; Gyro spots the movement from the corner of his eye. The little tease, he’s doing it on purpose. “It responded incorrectly when I poked my finger on the little needle.”

“It was probably just a used one,” Gyro says, turning just enough to not be distracted by the duck’s tail. “With some of my dried blood on it. The needles were single use on the prototype. I should have taken it out when I put it away. Here, I’ve got a fresh one in it now. Go ahead and put your finger in.”

“But it hurts,” Fenton objects, drawing back reflexively. He tucks his hands under his armpits as if Gyro was about to grab one force it into the little indent.

“Don’t be a wimp,” Gyro says gruffly, his actions betraying his words as he gives his head an affectionate pat. “I lost so much of my own blood testing this thing out. One poke isn’t going to hurt you.”

Right, one poke. Fenton sticks his finger in his mouth after, sucking on it like a small child with a cut. They wait until the machine announces the DNA is finished analyzing and then Gyro records the new confirmation message.

“Crackshell-Cabrera DNA recognized. Okay, now I just need to confirm it...okay, put your finger in again.”

Wincing before he even follows the command, Fenton allows the little contraption to stick him again.

“Crackshell-Cabrera DNA recognized.”

“See?” Gyro asks, grinning. He’s already unwrapping a new needle from the little plastic bag. “My inventions never break. Okay, let me just switch the needle quickly. Now, watch what it says when I stick my finger inside it.”

“Crackshell-Cabera DNA recognized.”

“What were you saying?” Fenton cracks, grinning in a know-it-all manner. He’s so used to being the wrong one around the lab, he must figure a little gloating must be in order. Gyro’s too preoccupied with his thoughts, the ones that are spinning inside his head at a mile a minute, that he doesn’t even care about the gentle ribbing.

He must notice the strange look on Gyro’s face, that there is something anxious on his normally relaxed features, because he reaches for Gyro’s hand, asking if he’s okay.

“I...let me check something,” Gyro mumbles, pulling away before Fenton’s fingers can meet his. “I still have a few blood samples in the fridge from when we were working on the cancer detection tests. I plan on disposing of them, of course, but I think...”

He trails off as he heads off to get one of the small vials, already pulling on a pair of gloves he grabbed on his way.

Fenton watches him switch out the needle once more and this time use a simple dropper to deposit a single tear of blood onto the needle. The needle sucks it up as if were a straw.

“DNA not recognized.”

“Huh,” Fenton says, cocking his head in surprise. “Would you look at that? Think it somehow merged our results? Created a double archive of data, perhaps?”

“Impossible,” Gyro denies the proposal, shaking his head. He slips the dropper of blood into a small baggie and zips it shut. Fenton watches the way his hands shake as he tosses the baggie into a nearby wastebasket, not understanding what is going on. “It doesn’t work that way. I programmed it myself, I know what it is and isn’t capable of doing and that is against the parameters. Fenton, you never talk about your father. Did he leave when you were young?”

“Oh, my, uh, father,” Fenton laughs awkwardly rubbing at the back of his head. He rocks back on his heels. “M’ma, she uh. She wasn’t my only mother. I don’t remember the second one, she passed before I hatched. But before they found out she was sick they, uh, they had wanted to start a family, so the two of them started going through the paperwork for a...donor.”

“A sperm donor?” Gyro clarifies. There’s a knot in his chest the size of a tennisball making it difficult to swallow.

“Yeah, that,” Fenton nods quickly. Gyro has never known the boy to be embarrassed when it comes to the topic of sperm or sex, he’s a uniquely sensual creature, but he supposes that if he was talking about sperm in relation to his own mother he might be less than willing to chat so casually either. “I was supposed to be carried by my other mother. M’ma was working narcotics back then and she was afraid even being around that stuff would cause complications. But when they went in for the physical as part of the application, that’s when they found out.”

“Cancer?” Gyro guesses. There could be other possibilities, of course – AIDS, for example, was a much bigger deal in the 90s than it is today, but most people don’t pass so quickly following diagnosis.

“Pancreatic,” Fenton confirms, smiling sadly. “M’ma says they didn’t believe the doctor’s prognosis, that she’d be able to fight it because she was strong. But they had already been on the waiting list for a while by then. They were really selective about the donor, you see, they had been on the waiting list at this specialty clinic for three years and didn’t want to miss their chance. So M’ma decided to carry me instead so my other mother could go through with her therapy. She, uh, didn’t make it. M’ma never dated since and it’s just been the two of us. She gave me her name when I hatched. The Crackshell part, I mean, M’ma’s maiden was just Cabrera.”

“So you don’t know your father?” Gyro asks. The entire sad story has left a dark cloud over his head and part of him wants to offer Fenton some sympathy over the unfortunate situation surrounding his birth. But for now, anyway, he has other things to worry about.

“No,” Fenton shakes his head. He picks up the pen and begins to scribble on the notebook he had left on the table earlier, maybe intimidated by the intensity in Gyro’s gaze. “I mean, I know some stuff about him. He was a rooster with white feathers. Because, um, you know, my other mom was a white hen, and they were hoping I came out looking something like both of them.”

“Except your mother is a duck,” Gyro supplies helpfully.

Fenton nods again. That’s the thing with cross-species fertilization. Duck genes in both genders are dominant when breeding with chickens but especially with female ducks. If his birth mother had been the hen, he most likely would still have come out a duck but perhaps with the coloring of his birth mother. Maybe the eyes or the yellowness of her feet and beak. Something. But female duck genes are extremely dominant over roosters which is why many single mothers favor rooster sperm for fertilization, it is the closest they can get to asexual reproduction. The only unusual addition is that about a quarter of the time, male offspring come out more diminutive than either parent, which is why only taller roosters are considered acceptable with that particular combination.

“I look more like my birth mother, obviously,” Fenton shrugs. He reaches up to touch the willowy feathers falling over one of his eyes. “My feathers are a little lighter though, especially the ones on my head.”

“This… specialty clinic,” Gyro begins, pausing for a moment to consider his words. “Do you know the name of it?”

“Oh, um. Darn. I know it, I’ve walked by it a hundred times, but the name has just slipped away. It’s on St. Canard University, run by the school board. They have really high standards and my mothers were hoping I’d inherit my father’s intelligence. He apparently had an IQ off the charts.”

Gyro closes his eyes and counts back the years in his head. Fenton is twenty-four years old. Gyro is forty-five. 

“You know I went to St. Canard University, right?” Gyro asks the obvious question, speaking very slowly as if Fenton were a small child and he needed this explained very simply.

“Well, yeah,” Fenton says furrowing his brow. “That’s why I applied for this internship. It was an alumni application. Mr. McDuck was only accepting students in your Alma Mater.”

“When I left my hometown to go to an Ivy League halfway across the country, my parents told me I was on my own,” Gyro begins. There is a strange quality to his voice, as if he were setting up the introduction to a fairy tale. “They thought anything more than a basic Bachelor’s degree was a waste of time and money. After the incident with Dr. Bushroot they became adamant that I didn’t go. They kept telling me to reject the acceptance later and just apply to a state college. When I didn’t, they cut me off.”

“Did they not recognize how brilliant you are?” Fenton asks in that entirely sympathetic way he is fully capable of emitting that Gyro completely lacks. “You’re the greatest scientific mind in the entire nation. Maybe the entire world.”

“Well, I wasn’t back then,” Gyro says, sighing with the weight of decades of parental disappointment on his shoulders. He turns to stare at one of the glass walls of the lab, watching the fish float serenely by. He does not look at Fenton as he continues. “I had just assumed they would be so proud of me getting in… Anyway, after a couple of years of living in the dorms, I started building computers as a part-time job to pay my way, but the first couple of years were tough. Really tough. I ate a lot of instant ramen, spent a lot of nights on friends’ couches throughout the summer, and wore a lot of dirty clothes because I couldn’t afford to even do my laundry. By all means, they should have rejected me. I was anemic, undernourished, and, looking back on it now, probably in the midst of a mental breakdown. But when I went to the St. Canard Fertility Clinic and took the physical to see if I was eligible to sell my sperm, they let that all pass because they had a deficiency of rooster donations given the student body. And, of course, I had the highest IQ on campus.”

Gyro words are met with silence. He continues to stare out at the undersea life, projecting an aura of calmness, as he feels his entire world crashing down around him.

“I’m your son,” Fenton says finally.

“We…can’t be certain of that,” Gyro says. He finally looks at Fenton, surprised not to see horror or revulsion on the young duck’s face. He’s gazing at him with the same look of adoration as he always gazes at him. “Maybe the machine is broken. Or maybe it’s a distant relative I’m unaware of, a second cousin of similar intelligence of my own, perhaps.”

“That’s highly unlikely,” Fenton says aloud what they’re both thinking inside. “If you were from a rich family that was capable of buying your way into Ivy League, maybe. But that isn’t the case, is it?”

“I regrettably come from farming stock,” Gyro confirms his assessment. “Neither my parents nor my grandparents even went to college.”

“So you’re my father.”

“I think, perhaps, it would be prudent for us to run a paternity test on you. Would you be willing to give me another DNA sample? A cheek swab would be sufficient in this instance.”

* * *

It isn’t that Gyro has never know there were little versions of himself running around somewhere out there. That was the entire point of donating sperm. The creation of offspring. As a gay man with little interest in ever becoming a fully involved father, the idea had been appealing on more than one level. Something about being the last link in a chain of millions of years of evolution had been mildly disconcerting. Passing on his DNA with none of the fuss had been an ideal situation, on top of the much-needed funds.

There had been times in the past when he had walked past a chick where he had wondered, gazing at the shape of the beak, the color of the feathers, if that one might possibly be one of his. No way to prove it one way or another, it had been a closed donation situation. He had even entertained the idea of running into one of his own offspring at some sort of convention, the youngest perhaps presenting a great invention of his own. If his offspring did, indeed, inherit some of his intelligence.

He just hadn’t ever assumed he would find himself romantically and sexually involved with his own son.

“Well, that confirms it,” he says, staring at the computer where the words POSITIVE MATCH are blinking in lime green font. “You’re my son.”

“Yeah,” Fenton agrees. He’s sitting in the chair beside him, elbows resting on his knees and his hands hanging between them. “I… You’re my dad.”

“Of all the odds in the world,” Gyro gets out, slapping a hand over his eyes. He drags his hands down over his beak and lets the hand fall to his side. “What did I do in a past life to deserve this?”

“Are you…are you that disappointed?” Fenton asks, his voice shaky. He sounds on the verge of tears. “I know I’m not the most successful guy who ever lived but...”

“Disappointed?” Gyro snorts. He laughs, despite himself. “Disappointed, in you? With the brilliant, sweet, beautiful man you grew up to be? God, no. I’m not disappointed, how could I be? You’re about as perfect a person as I’ve ever seen. I’m proud of you. I never would have imagined by genes could have created somebody like you. That’s the problem.”

“I don’t get it,” Fenton frowns up at him, all adorably soft brown feathers and big, glossy eyes. “If you’re proud of me, why do you sound so upset?”

“Seriously?” Gyro asks. He climbs to his feet and runs his hands through his hair, nearly knocking off his hat in the process. “Fenton, I was in love with you. I was ready to propose to you and buy a house with you and grow old with you and spend my last days going senile with you.”

“We, we can still do that,” the duck sputters, thrown off by the half-confession. He stays sitting, looking up at Gyro in a way that seems to emphasize the difference in everything – age, height, familial role. “I mean, it might be a little soon for marriage, but I feel the same way. The moment I saw you in person I knew there was something there, something that was pulling me to you. This explains it all, doesn’t it? There have been studies like this, where women meet their fathers for the first time and-”

“I know what lurid stories you’re talking about,” Gyro interrupts him. “And you can’t be thinking straight. Do you seriously want to continue with our relationship, knowing half of you once lived in my scrotum?”

“Sometimes you fill me with so much of your semen I already feel like that,” Fenton quips. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Gyro watches him wipe at his face, at the wetness gathering at the corner of his eyes. “Gyro, it’s your choice. It’s not like you can get me pregnant or anything, and I still love you. No, stop it. I know you don’t want me saying that, but it’s true. If you asked me to move in today, I’d show up at your door with all my belongings tomorrow. This doesn’t bother me. If anything, it just makes me feel closer to you.”

“But the looks we’ll receive,” Gyro counters, his voice going shrill. “From your mom, our friends. How can we-”

“Nobody else knows,” Fenton reminds him. He climbs to his feet and walks over to Gyro, laying a hand on his bicep. “Nobody ever has to know. It’s not like we look anything alike. If you want me to walk out the door right now and never return, I’ll do it. It’s up to you.”

Walk out the door and never return?

Gyro would rather die than even contemplate such a thing.

“No,” he gets out, grabbing at Fenton’s wrists. He pulls him against him, his arms going around him in a tight hug. Fenton lays his head against his chest, sighing with obvious relief at the comforting touch. “I need a little time to work this out. I don’t know what this all means. These feelings I have for you, is it some subconscious connection? Does it even matter? I just know I don’t want to lose you.”

“Maybe I can help you figure this all out,” Fenton proposes, leaning up to kiss him. “One question though. Am I still allowed to call you daddy?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended to be a one shot but who knows, maybe I'll do a follow up eventually.


End file.
